He said, “By the way, Shmuel, I have something in the other room you might like to see.”
“What?”
“Come, look.” And the portly governor threw open a door and led Hacohen to a shelf on which stood a row of twenty-two tall books bound in leather and stamped in gold. Hacohen recognized them as a fine Lithuanian printing of the Talmud, for he had seen such books in Berdichev while collecting money for the land purchase; and when Tabari handed him a volume to inspect he opened the pages reverently and before him stood the glorious, singing Hebrew that his father had wanted him to study.
“What I’d like to know,” Tabari was saying, “is why this book has such an effect on Jews?”
Shmuel looked at the large pages—more than twenty inches tall and nearly fourteen wide. This was a book unlike those that a Muslim or a Christian would know, for each page was a separate work in itself, composed of six or eight distinct kinds of type, varying in size from very large to very small. The organization was unbelievable: in the center of the page would appear in bold type a short phrase, surrounded on all sides by blocks of different-sized type explaining and elaborating what the central phrase intended. Down margins would appear columns only three quarters of an inch wide, printed in minute letters. It was a jumble, a confusion, a thing of beauty, and no two pages were alike.
“What does it mean?” Tabari asked.
“Well, this bold sentence in the middle is an opinion handed down by the great Rabbi Akiba.”
“Who was he?” Tabari asked.
“A rabbi. He’s buried here in Tubariyeh.”
Tabari studied Akiba’s material, then pointed to one of the surrounding blocks of type. “What’s this one?”
“A judgment of Rabbi Meir, who came later. He’s also buried in Tubariyeh.”
“And this big block over there?”
“Greatest of them all. Maimonides of Egypt.” He studied the beautiful, complicated page and said, “Excellency, you’ve chosen a page most appropriate to Tubariyeh, for Maimonides is also buried here.” Then, to his dismay, he realized that Kaimakam Tabari wasn’t taking his discourse on the Talmud seriously, had not even wanted to know what the great Jewish book was about. Tabari had much earthier ideas in mind and in pursuit of them he slammed the big book closed and stared directly at his little guest. “Shmuel, will you have a synagogue in your new settlement?”
“Yes.”
“Well, wouldn’t a set of the Talmud like this … real leather. Wouldn’t that be a great thing to give the new synagogue?”
At first Hacohen thought that Tabari, in gratitude for the baksheesh he would extract from the Jews, was proposing to give the newcomers this expensive gift of books, and the little Jew almost made an ass of himself. He started to express his gratitude, then caught himself: My God! He expects me to buy them.
Tabari, quick to notice changes in the faces of people who came to consult him, caught the incipient smile and underwent the same degree of shock: My God! I do believe the little Jew thought I was giving him the books.
It was Tabari who spoke first. “So I thought that if you had—well—even a little extra money …”
The rest of the things Hacohen said that hot evening he could not later recall, for it was not he but some power greater that spoke through his voice. “Where did you get the Talmud?” he asked coldly.
“There was an old rabbi with some papers that had to be signed … in Beirut.”
“Did he offer you that Talmud? For some papers?”
“They were exceedingly significant papers … involving his whole community.”
“But did he offer you his Talmud?” In some strange way it was now Shmuel Hacohen’s office. It was he who was posing the questions.
“Well … it wouldn’t be exact to say that he offered the books.”
“You asked him what he had of value?”
“I expected him to come with money … gold pieces. When he arrived with only books …”
“You took them?”
“It was a matter of vital significance,” Tabari insisted.
Shmuel could not speak. He opened one of the volumes and studied the title page: Wilno, 1732. He wondered what dreadful pressure had been put on the old rabbi to make him surrender these volumes. Jews had died for these books, had been burned at the stake, had seen their children and their sisters killed. What had the old man wanted for his people so desperately that he would divorce himself from his own conscience? To the kaimakam he said, quietly, “These are rare books, Excellency.”
“I thought they were.”
“And you’d like to convert them into cash?”
“Of course. I know you said you had no more gold. But a man always keeps a little back.”
Without argument Shmuel Hacohen took from his left pocket the precious coin. Ceremoniously he placed it on the table where the kaimakam could see it. “I don’t know what it’s worth, Excellency, but it’s yours. Maimonides has said, ‘If a man build a synagogue let him build it finer than the house in which he dwells.’ I shall live with rats and lice a little longer. But the synagogue …” He looked at Tabari as if to ask: What kind of man would steal the holy book of another, then try to sell it back for profit?
Shmuel started piling the massive volumes onto his arms, but Tabari, seeing the impracticability of this, summoned his Egyptian servant. Hacohen pushed the man aside and at last balanced the twenty-two volumes on his forearms and left the room. The kaimakam hurried ahead to open his office door for the burdened man, and for a long moment the two stared at each other, the moral gap between them so tremendous that no comprehension could bridge it.
As he walked through the hot night Shmuel kept repeating the words of Moses his Teacher: “And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?”
… THE TELL
For Cullinane the problem of the Jews’ moral right to Israel was simple. It was a question of custodianship. When Herod was king, the Galilee held a population of more than half a million; in Byzantine times, more than a million. But at the end of Arab, Crusader and Turkish rule the same land supported less than sixty thousand, a visible loss of sixteen out of every seventeen persons. From what he could now see about him, Cullinane guessed that in another twenty years of restored Jewish control the rebuilt soil would again maintain its million people.
This was the staggering, incontrovertible fact: the other custodians had allowed the once sweet land to deteriorate, the wells to fall in and the forests to vanish; the Jews had brought the land back to productivity. He could not avoid wondering whether such creative use did not confer a moral right to possess the land, previous negligence having forfeited such right. The more Cullinane asked himself this question, the more he realized that he was basing an entire moral structure on land alone, and this was not logical.
Yet one by one he had to discard alternatives. Israel’s religious claim he dismissed without much consideration. Israelis, as Jews, had no more claim to a free Israel than Quebec’s misguided Frenchmen had a right to a separatist state merely because they happened to be Catholics. “One hell of a lot more goes into the making of a viable state,” Cullinane assured himself, “than religion,” and he said this even though he, as a Catholic, sympathized with his co-religionists in Canada who felt that they were being discriminated against. To establish a state wholly on religious foundations led to historical perplexities like Jinnah’s Pakistan or the problems involving northern Ireland. As an Irishman, Cullinane felt that his ancestral island had a right to be united, but surely not on religious considerations only.
Nor was Israel’s historic claim to the land impressive; to Cullinane it was irrelevant. Once a man started opening the historical-rights barrel of eels, no one could predict where the slippery evidence might run. The Sioux and Chippewa would reoccupy the United States, which might be an improvement but which might also entail difficulties; ninety-nine per cent of Englishmen
would have to evacuate; and the composition of France would be completely changed, which might also be a turn for the better but which would probably create as many problems as it solved. History was neither logical nor moral, and whether one liked it or not the passage of years did establish a pragmatic sanction which only egomaniacs like Benito Mussolini or ghostly fools like the wandering dauphins of France tried to revoke.
One by one Cullinane could tick off the lines of reasoning which failed to impress him regarding the Jewish claim to Israel—language, race, hurts endured abroad, the authority of the Bible, the historical injustice of being the only organized people without its own land—all of these made no substantial impression on Cullinane; but when he had dismissed them logically and in order, there remained one towering consideration, and as the first year’s dig approached an ending this problem of moral right returned to perplex him.
“What do you think?” he asked the men in the tent one night.
To his surprise, Tabari defended the Jews. “I place maximum importance on this matter of historical claims,” he said. “I believe that any organized people which has demonstrated a cohesiveness and common purpose has a right to its ancestral lands. So even though in this instance the Jews have recovered that land at my expense, they are nevertheless entitled to it. Perhaps they took too much too fast. Perhaps the present modus vivendi will require adjustment in minor points. But the Jews’ basic right to be where they are can’t be controverted.”
Dr. Eliav was, as always, careful and reflective. He lit his pipe, looked at the doors and said quietly, “Since no reporters are present I will confess that Jemail’s reasoning about adjusting the modus vivendi makes sense. Throughout history this bridge-land of Israel has been able to exist as a viable nation only when it maintained sensible economic relations with neighboring lands like Syria and Lebanon or neighboring empires like Egypt and Mesopotamia. We’d be idiots if we argued that some miracle in the twentieth century has changed that fundamental truth. So the present enmity between the nations of this area has got to be considered a temporary interruption of an historic process, and I have found that where temporary interruptions go against the grain of history they do not long endure. Now, how the necessary rapprochements are to be achieved I can’t say, but some weight must be given to the fact that we have made the land ours by demonstrating that we understand it and can make it productive. History usually takes such accomplishments into account, also.”
“But the real problem that worries Cullinane,” Jemail suggested, “is whether such custodianship does in theory as well as fact create ownership. Isn’t that your problem?”
“Precisely,” Cullinane agreed. “From what I said earlier, you know that I think it does. Superior husbandry gave the Anglo-Saxons custodianship of America. Superior English governance gave England temporary title to Ireland.”
“That word ‘temporary’ frightens me,” Eliav interrupted. “You mean that we Jews shall be here for a decade, then …”
“Certainly more than a decade,” Jemail laughed. “After all, how long did the English hold Ireland?”
“Six or seven hundred years,” Cullinane replied. “That’s what I mean when I say temporary.”
“I breathe easier,” Eliav said. He noticed that Jemail was about to speak, but apparently reconsidered and sat with his hands in his lap.
“Can we agree on this?” Cullinane asked. “The custodianship of Arab and Turk was a disaster, at least so far as land surface was concerned.”
“No argument from this Arab,” Jemail agreed affably. “Some years ago an Englishman named Jarvis pointed out that for centuries the world has been misled by a phrase. We called the Bedouins ‘the sons of the desert,’ whereas they were really ‘the fathers of the desert.’ ”
“What did he mean?” Cullinane asked.
“Wherever the Bedouin took his camels and his goats he destroyed good land to create his own desert. After all, very few people in the course of world history have been able to build deserts out of such fruitful areas as the Nile, the Euphrates and the Galilee.” He laughed, then added, “It’s our special talent, but of course we have others. And persistence is one of them. You know the maxim we Arabs are taught. ‘A man who gains his revenge after forty years is acting in haste.’ ”
“The question as I see it,” Eliav suggested, puffing at his pipe, “is whether the world is entitled to prevent the Bedouin from doing what he damned well pleases with his land. Are we justified in insisting that any segment of creation—a human life, a river, a horse that might run well if trained, a corner of land—must be utilized to its top capacity? Perhaps, in God’s strange way, the Bedouin who created deserts was acting more in harmony with the divine plan for this area than was the Jew, who proved he could eradicate those deserts.”
“It’s just possible,” Tabari said, “that God, having seen what you Jews and we Arabs did with this land, and the strange fruit we grew here—Islam, Judaism, Christianity—cried, ‘Turn that cursed place back to the desert so that no more religions are raised up in My name.’ Perhaps the way of the Bedouin is the way of God.”
The men relaxed as the photographer appeared with a pot of coffee. “What’s the argument?” he asked as he spread the cups.
“I asked if Israel’s constructive custodianship of land conferred on her a moral right to ownership,” Cullinane explained.
“Sounds like the pragmatic sanction of the imperialists,” the Englishman said brightly. “What we were tossed out of India for.”
“You’re right,” Eliav said. “If you judge the Jew in Israel solely from the point of custodianship you come close to charging him with imperialism. So we’ve got to consider moral right, but having admitted this I want to ask one question. Is there any nation on earth that can come before the bar of justice claiming that it exemplifies moral right? On this spot the Canaanites drove out the original owners, and the Jews expelled the Canaanites and Egyptians and Persians and Babylonians, and God knows who else. You Arabs,” he said, pointing to Jemail, “came into the act very late. Very late indeed. You just barely got here ahead of the Crusaders and the Turks. So why suddenly should Israel, of all nations on earth, be summoned before the bar of international justice to explain its moral right? You know, when there was a town on this tell years ago a girl who married had to be sure that on the morning after the wedding her mother could parade through the town a bloodstained sheet, proving that her daughter had been a virgin. What kind of sheet do you propose that the Israeli government parade through the world? And to whom? To Peru, for example, which disinherited its Indians and accomplished nothing in doing so? To Australia, which conscientiously set out to kill off every Tasmanian and succeeded? To Portugal? To the United States with its Negro problem? Let us first see parading through the streets of Jerusalem the bloodstained sheet of Russia, proving that she was a virgin. Or the sheets of Germany and France.”
Eliav had spoken with rather more force than he had intended, and the Englishman said, “I always think that bedding is a great topic for coffee,” and Tabari suggested, “Why don’t you throw their own Book at them? ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.’ ”
Eliav laughed and said that he apologized, then in his slow manner concluded, “What I was leading up to was this. Israel’s ultimate justification must be moral, but not in the way that nations have used that word in the past. We will not appeal to history nor to custodianship of land nor to the persecutions we suffered abroad. We’ll stand before the world and say, ‘Here in a small land we have shown how people of many backgrounds can live together in harmony. With us, Arab and Druse, Muslim and Christian know social justice.’ John, you’re wrong when you justify everything by custodianship of land. Anyone can attain that with a police force and some agriculture specialists. But Israel’s custodianship of people, of human rights, is going to be spectacular.” He hesitated, then pointed at each of the men with his pipe. “That’s to be our moral justification.”
Tabari clapped him on the shoulder and said, “In a land noted for noble speeches, that hit a fairly high standard, Eliav. But I’m afraid you won’t have time to prove your point, because what I see happening is this. After some years we Arabs will unite, impossible as that now seems. With leadership from some unsuspected outside quarter like Persia or Morocco, or perhaps from central Asia, as in the past, the united Arabs will drive the Jews into the sea. Just as we did the Crusaders. Of course, the entire civilized world will be aghast at the slaughter, but it will do nothing to stop us. Absolutely nothing. Spain, once again a monarchy perhaps, will accept some of the refugees. Poland and Holland will take some, as before. But then in the United States horrible pogroms will begin. I can’t see the reasons too clearly now, but you’ll think up some. All the Jews in New York will be marched into a gigantic space ship and shot off into the air on a no-return rocket, and good Christians led by your President will applaud. From San Francisco, from Cleveland and especially Fort Worth, other rockets will shoot forth. And off in space these lonely ships will circle the earth, and light will reflect from them so that at night you’ll be able to see them pass the moon, and people will cry, ‘There go our Jews.’ And after many years the conscience of the world will be aroused, and citizens of great soul in Germany and Lithuania will make it possible for surviving Jews to come back once more to Palestine. And when they reach this spot and see how their irrigation plans have been allowed to lapse, and when they see how the Arabs permitted the schools and the vineyards to perish, they’ll say, ‘Things have sure gone to hell in our absence.’ And they’ll begin building all over again.”
Both Eliav and Cullinane started to comment on this summary, but neither could think of anything relevant to say.
• • •
For Kaimakam Tabari to travel from Tubariyeh to Akka in August his caravan had to depart at sunrise so that a safe halting point could be reached by noon, thus permitting the tents to be pitched before the worst heat of day. Consequently, at four in the morning a sizable entourage convened at the caravanserai, where horses and provisions were checked.
The Source: A Novel Page 111
